Pumas, lynx and panthers: Are big cats really roaming the British countryside?

Driving in the Scottish highlands in early May, tourist Lottie Hodson did a double-take when she saw the sleek black smudge at the treeline's edge. 

Alerting her brother Ed and their friend Bella Firth, the trio stopped the car to try and get a better look. What they saw left them shaken, excited, and reaching in vain for their camera phones. 

"I just pointed out the window and said 'stop the car there's a panther!'" Lottie tells Euronews Green.

"It was a woodland area, and the creature was bigger than a labrador with a long tail and all black, jet black," she explains.

Perhaps unwisely they got out of the car to try and find the animal but it had already disappeared. 

"Some people in the local pub said it could have been a 'kellas cat', but whatever it was, it was a very cool thing to see," she adds.

Kellas cats, only identified in 1984, are a cross between the Scottish wildcat, native to the Scottish Highlands, and a domestic cat. They're usually black with a long tail, and much bigger than your average pet tabby. 

However, experts believe what Lottie saw could very well have been a big cat: A black panther from the genus Panthera pardus, born in the wild and living free, but secretive and almost invisible to the public. 

New evidence revealed recently provides yet more proof that big cats could be on the loose in Britain. 

Hair samples taken from a barbed wire fence near the site of a dead sheep in South England tested positive for black panther DNA after a documentary film crew followed the sample to a laboratory.

Experts believe there have been a few 'release' events during the last century which kept Britain's big cat population healthy. 

The first was during World War II when zoos got rid of them because they weren't able